Read Online Slither by John Halkin - Free Book Online

you?’ Jenny asked eagerly.
    ‘Oh, you’ll be in bed long before I’m ready.’
    After their meal he helped Helen to tidy the cottage and put things away. It was almost eleven o’clock before he went out to the shed. She had gone up to the bedroom; from the garden he could see her shadow on the curtain.
    Not a sound came from the ice-box. He stood in front of it, listening. Maybe he’d been imagining things earlier; maybe not. He thought of Angus having to go down into those sewers every day, and some of the remarks he’d made.
    But first things first. He washed the bench down and cleaned the whole place thoroughly, then refilled the reservoir with fresh water. Helen would find nothing odd about him working this late at night. As a darkroom, the shed was only makeshift, not even completely lightproof in the daytime.
    He developed the film first, rinsed it, and hung it up to dry. Good clear pictures, most of them. Turning next to the ice-box, he began methodically to remove the strands of wire with his pliers. He collected them all up and threw them in the rubbish box before pulling on his gauntlet gloves and snapping open the clips which secured the lid.
    Then he stopped for a second or two, apprehensively. His stomach muscles cramped. He’d the odd impression that Angus was looking over his shoulder, a sardonic grin on his face.
    He raised the lid.
    The worms lay curled up at the bottom of the box, intertwining and overlapping each other like Laocoon’s serpents. They were motionless, a glorious splash of luminous colour against the dull white of the plastic, every imaginable shade of green and purple merging into each other.
    Still he hesitated, but at last he plunged his gauntleted hand in among them and grasped one. Carefully he extracted it from the coils of the others, shaking it slightly to free it. Between his fingers it felt supple, almost alive. He placed it on the sheet of white blotting paper he’d spread out on the bench in front of him.
    Its jaws yawned open, then suddenly snapped shut again.
    Startled, Matt was about to bring a heavy file down on its head when he paused and poked it with the end instead. No further movement. He rolled the worm over. Still nothing.
    Laying a rule alongside it, he switched on his lamp and photographed it from several angles. In length it measured nineteen-and-a-half inches. The head was elongated, with long narrow jaws. He forced them apart and ran the tip of his gloved finger over the sharp teeth; surprisingly, a few felt loose. Between them were several decaying shreds of meat.
    Its skin was tough and scaly. He wondered if they sloughed it off, or if it renewed itself patchily, a bit at a time. Even indeath its colours had a scintillating brilliance; he’d never seen anything like it before, except perhaps certain stones or a rare seashell.
    Opening the ice-box once again he took out a second worm and started to compare them. Were their skins identical or individual? He examined them methodically, inch by inch, and was so absorbed in the task, he didn’t hear the shed door open.
    ‘Oh no!’
    It was the note of fear in Helen’s voice that shocked him more than anything else. She was staring at the worms on the bench, her eyes bulging.
    ‘Matt, it’s not worms, is it?’ And you’ve brought them here?’ She clutched her dressing-gown about her and took a step back. Her hand shook. ‘How could you?’
    ‘It’s all right,’ he tried to calm her.
    ‘All right?’ she screamed at him hysterically. ‘Matt, don’t you see it can’t be all right? We came down here to forget these things. They’re in the past.’
    ‘Helen—’
    ‘I suspected you’d something like that in the picnic box.’
    ‘They’re dead.’
    She shook her head violently. ‘They’re not dead, Matt.’
    ‘Of course they are.’
    ‘Not in your mind. You dream about them, don’t you? I know you do. You toss and turn, you moan, sometimes I hear you crying, whimpering like some animal